Marianne bears witness to this moment. Her coat flutters behind her, and inside its shrinking shadow her ruined wings wrap themselves around her shell. Her hood is torn from her head and flaps around her neck with a series of dull thwacks, the bounding of a half severed head. Her chains are rattling furiously. She raises one arm to cover her face, but there's nothing to hide the brilliant golden hair that's whipping unchecked behind her with all the rage of a waterfall and shining as though it were a crown pronouncing her a queen. The red-tinted gleam of her teeth shines painfully bright. 

She is scowling. A thousand insults shred themselves to bits on her teeth before they escape her mouth. This is an important moment. A turning point. A moment of reckoning she has allowed to happen in her sloth, and so must allow to play out in full. She is decided. She will not cut Canada down at the knees. She will not swoop in and steal her away, she will not add her voice to this chorus, will not step onto the stage and wrap around her like some smothering security blanket. Great paws of shadow tense themselves at the edges of the light.

She leaps up, and is gone. Marianne finds a column of Doubt looming over Canada's battlefield, and she spins herself around it and vaults on, up, and on again until she reaches the top. She leans forward at the edge on all fours. She is a lioness waiting to pounce. But just now, she bears witness. From the cracks inside the light, she watches, and snorts, and smolders. 

She knows who you are, Canada Taliv. She knows how this will end. Marianne is watching, waiting, to see what kind of shape your dagger-heart might be. This is the moment, the only moment, for you to find out what sort of teeth are hiding in your mouth. What is a dagger to you, Canada Taliv? And once it's in your hands, how will you choose to wield it? 

Marianne leans forward. Her burning eyes drink in the sight of a god, the first god of her young life. She licks her lips with relish. She will bear witness.